Gravity
by peggie sue
Summary: It's been 37 years since he's seen her, and he's not letting her go this time.


He's an asshole. A prick, actually, for doing this. He feels heavy with every single step, and he regrets not taking the flight attendant up on her offer to push him in a wheelchair to the gate. He fucking hates flying, too. That had been an experience, because it isn't every day that you see an eighty-seven year old man running away from home. To New York City. From Boca. He, Elliot Stabler, lives in Boca. And is running away. He wonders what Kathleen will do when she discovers that he'd walked himself right out of that silly nursing home he lives in. When she'd moved out here with Henry and their kids, she'd told him that he didn't have an option. Maureen and Eli were still in the city, and her kids were in college, and Dickie was in South Jersey, and Liz was in D.C. _Liz_. Dickie has gone by "Richard" since forever, but this "Liz" business is a recent adjustment. Anything that's happened in the past twenty years feels recent to him these days, but somehow, every single yesterday feels like a century dragging behind him.

In the Florida sun, the days peel away from him slowly, taking little pieces of him with them every time. His hair, his strength, little bits of his memory. Certain parts of his life are there with him, but others are a blur, black and white, like he's been underwater too long at the public swimming pool and his eyes are stinging and fogged over from the chlorine. Yet somehow, she is always vivid. And he can see her clearly, always so, so clearly. He used to feel guilty that he remembered her laugh so exactly when Kathy's is a distant, faded memory in the back of his mind. He cannot remember the exact way that his wife would smile, or say his name, or the manner in which she would walk. But her? Olivia? He can almost feel her eyes fixed on him, the way they would linger after he'd rolled up his sleeves. The echo of her voice still lingers in his ears—_El—_or, more clearly, _Sonofabitch! _and he can remember the exact way he'd felt when she was walking beside him. He'd been fucking invincible back then, and she'd been invincible too, and he hadn't done a damn thing about it.

Sometimes, a lot of times, he wants to punch his younger self in the face. Smack him around a bit, and tell him, _tell _him_, if you hurt her, Elliot, I swear to God. I swear to fucking God. _He'd gone and hurt her anyway. And he hadn't seen her since then. He'd been fifty years old when he left that unit, and it has been thirty-seven years since he so much as laid eyes on his partner. His best friend. He thinks, as cheesy and horrible as it sounds, that they were connected. It had been so much deeper than a damn partnership between them, and he had seen it. But he had been too thick to put his own fear behind him and make a change about it. They had been great.

They could've been better. And he could have given that damn woman _everything_.

He tries, now at least, not to regret anything. Kathy died almost eleven years ago and he has been working ever since then not to feel guilty about the things he cannot change. But God, he wishes that he would have accepted that wheelchair ride. He is a crazy man. He has officially lost his mind. But it occurred to him, last week, that this shit isn't over yet. He may be old, and arthritic, and slow, but he is still alive. He exists even though his generation is dropping like flies nowadays, and as long as he is here on this planet he knows that she is too. She must be, she has to be. She is somewhere, and it has taken him almost forty years to find her, but that doesn't mean he won't. Because the truth is, he hasn't really been looking.

So it had been last week that he'd decided he was leaving. _Fuck Boca_, he thought to himself, even though he'd always liked warm weather. Liv was constantly cold back then, with her leather jackets in the middle of July, but she had still preferred the fall to the summer. _New York in the fall_, he remembers her saying, _is the prettiest season there is. My mother loved it._ He can't remember the name of her mother, something with an _E_ or maybe an_ S_, and it isn't at all romantic but he's old and he remembers the woman's story, the one that began Olivia's story, and that is important and that is enough. He had sat on his little sofa in the room he'd been assigned to, and had taken his pills, and turned to his daytime nurse. "Maggie? D'you know how much a plane ticket to the city costs these days?"

Maggie is the only nurse that doesn't bother him, with her bright blue eyes and dark, dark hair and perpetually tanned skin. She reminds him a little bit of Olivia, only more delicate and with a more ladylike vocabulary. "Sorry Mr. Stabler," she'd shrugged, "not off the top of my head. Got big plans to head back to the city, there?"

She was teasing him. "I would tell you," he said, "but then I'd have to kill you."

She shot him a glare, one that read _don't do anything stupid, _but promised that she'd look it up for him after lunch. Maggie talks to everyone, and she'd got him talking about Olivia one day. She is very interested in Great Loves, and she has a fiance named Dan whom she is convinced is the great love of her life. The girl could ramble on and on and on about these Great Loves, and these Deep Connections, and often Elliot is so taken with her complete faith and happiness and shimmer that he forgets, for a minute, just how jaded he has become.

He hurts. His back, his feet, his hands from holding onto his stupid walker. He thinks that the distance from the airport terminal to the gate is the longest walk of his entire fucking life. Must be ten miles, at least. He has a bag, a little duffel, stuffed in the front of his walker and he's moving slowly. Step by step, because he just can't go any faster. But he also cannot get to that woman fast enough.

He'd looked her up on the computer. _Benson, Olivia_, in the common room one night after dinner. And even though there were thirteen Benson, Olivias located in New York City, it hadn't taken long to figure out which one was his. He knew that she was still there, on the Upper West Side, because that had been her home as a little girl and her home as a cop and it was probably her home now. Home, he thinks, is a very relative and deceptive word. Because for all the years he lived in Queens, and for all the years he's lived in Boca, he cannot say for certain that his heart has been located in either of those places. But there she'd been, her name, sitting on his computer screen. Like she'd really only been a button a way in all the years she'd been lost for. For a moment, he'd felt resourceful. But then it had hit him, plain as day, that she _existed_.

She still existed, just like him. And while he'd been letting his regrets and stupidity soak into his skin for the better part of forty years, she'd been growing old exactly as he had been. It makes him laugh as he pushes his walker forward, the thoughts of Liv as an old woman. He can never quite picture her knitting or wearing floral sweaters or watching soap operas in an armchair all day long. The women in Boca, they love the soaps. He briefly allows himself to imagine her, at eighty-five, rolling her eyes at paperwork and banging her cane against the interrogation room table.

He doesn't know her anymore.

But then again, there are very few things that Elliot does know anymore, and the fact that he loves her happens to be one of them, so he keeps walking.

By the time he reaches the line for a taxi, he's sweating. It's nerves and it's exhaustion, and he tries to brush off the looks people are giving him. If another thirty-year-old man with his own colossal cart of bags, comes up to him and asks if he needs help, he swears to God. He feels like just breathing is an embarrassment when you're as old and weak as he is. _Once_, he wants to tell them, _I was a Marine. And I could've taken your ass. _He's jealous of their youth, but he's willing to settle. If he gets to talk to her one more time, if he gets to see her one more time, he'll never ask for anything again.

He passes the cab driver the crumpled piece of paper, the address, that he has produced from his pocket. He fucking hates his glasses, and he hates the fact that they are always clipped to his shirt, and he hates the fact that he can't see a damn thing without them. He'll look like a fool, but when he knocks on that door, he knows he'll be wearing them because he's got to see her as quickly as possible. He knows he isn't dying, but lately, it's like he can feel the time scraping against his skin as it peels away.

"S'cold in here," he mutters, feeling like a pansy. It's June. The cabby does not turn off the air conditioner, and they drive in silence into Manhattan.

333 W. 86th Street, New York, NY.

He is almost pleasantly surprised when he sees that the address belongs to an assisted living facility. Must cost a fucking fortune, but Olivia had always been well off, and it's a relief that he won't have to maneuver himself up the stairs of her walk-up. That, he remembers. He remembers how even though she'd been pretty close to the ground floor, those stairs had been a real bitch in the middle of the night.

The cab driver pulls his walker out from the backseat and unfolds it, settling his duffel back in the basket. "You moving, man?" he asks in an accent that Elliot doesn't recognize. He shrugs.

"Maybe."

"That's forty-five."

Elliot fishes three twenties from his pocket, embarrassed to ask for change, but his frugality hasn't faded. He wonders if his hands are shaking from nerves or exhaustion, and he hopes for the latter, because he can't fuck this up now. He absolutely cannot. At one point in his life, he'd have planned his words out in his head, but he'd figured that it would be worthless. He always ends up forgetting himself around Olivia anyway, and he's smarter now than he'd been when he'd left. He had been young and too angry. Now, at least, he trusts himself a little more. He knows not to blurt out the first thing that pops into his mind, but on some level he secretly hopes that she will still render him senseless, and not a day will have passed between them when he sees her again.

His life is strange, he thinks, _life is strange_, and then he hobbles into the lobby of Atria West 86.

"I'm here to see Olivia Benson?" he says, but words choke out of his throat like a question. He sounds like an idiot, and he probably looks like one, with all of his possessions stuffed into his little bag and his walker with the tennis balls on the bottom.

"One moment please... who are you?" the receptionist asks him, not really looking up from what she's typing. He swallows because he doesn't know what to say.

"I'm, my name's Elliot Stabler. I'm here to see Olivia Benson." At that the woman looks up from her keyboard, and her face softens. He wonders if he really looks that harmless, and he hopes that he doesn't. He hates these situations because he doesn't have a badge to flash anymore, he is just himself, and he feels a little bit like he's naked.

"Well, Elliot Stabler," she says, her voice patronizing. "She's having lunch upstairs with her daughter right now, and Ella didn't mention that they were expecting anyone—"

"Daughter? She has a daughter?" Elliot hasn't felt shock in years, but the familiar numbness of the feeling is tugging at his stomach as it drops. _Ella?_ The woman looks at him, puzzled, as if he has four heads or is suffering from dementia. "I... uh, I don't, I'm sorry. It's just been a while. It's been a while since I've seen her."

The woman smiles, sympathetic, and a piece of her braided hair falls in front of her face. He imagines that she's in her forties with the way her crow's feet pinch when she smiles at him from behind her glasses. He squints and sees that her name tag reads _Joanne. _"Would you like me to buzz up to them, Mr. Stabler?" Joanne asks, "And let them know you're here?"

_Them_. Olivia and her daughter. Olivia and her daughter, Ella. He knows that there are words swimming in his mind but he can't quite make them reach his lips. He's suddenly very tired, the sheer weight of the day sitting itself on his shoulders. He sighs. "They, um, they don't know I'm coming. She doesn't know I'm here."

By now, Joanne has noted his exhaustion. He is sure that it's visible in the way his weight is starting to sag onto his walker, his elbows aching from the pressure and fuck, he just hates being old. She's concerned as she asks, "Is there anyone here with you, Mr. Stabler?"

He shakes his head. "No." He has always been a man of few words.

"Did somebody just drop you off then for a visit? Because usually they have to be scheduled, and people know to call... have you visited Ms. Olivia before?" she asks, and he doesn't know which question to answer first. Her tone isn't condescending, she's just confused, and he feels like a child. He should have called her ahead of time. He should have known to do that, but he always forgets the little details, the important details. And now he's just standing there, in the Atria lobby, looking like an idiot. An absolute fucking idiot. Shit.

"I've never been here before. Took a cab."

"So you're from the city?" Joanne looks relieved. Oops.

"Took it from the airport. Can I, um, can I just go up and see her? I'm a friend. S'been a while. I don't think she'll mind."

Joanne looks as if she isn't sure what to process first, and she still looks puzzled by the story, but he figures that she'll trust him. He has nothing to lose and no one to lie for. He just needs to see Olivia, and his heart starts beating faster when he realizes that wherever she is, she's just a few floors away, eating her lunch. Eating her lunch with her _daughter_. The fact alone that she has a child, or maybe more of them, makes him believe in God a little bit again. She'd been forty-eight the last time he'd lay eyes on her, and she'd been without a family. No children, no husband, no nothing.

Husband. The word hits him like a ton of fucking bricks. _Husband husband husband husband_. He's learned the hard way that yes, it takes two to make a baby, and he can't believe that he hadn't considered this idea before he'd flown his old ass to New York. A husband. He'd been so consumed with his regrets, with his sudden need to tell her everything, with his unquenchable desire to make her the happiest woman alive, that he hadn't bothered to wonder if some other man already had. Oh, God. Oh God. This, he figured, was what a panic attack felt like. His palms were sweating and he felt like his body weight had tripled. He didn't want to be standing anymore, and he wanted to be back in Boca, or a million miles away, or under a rock. His cheeks flushed. "I, um, you know, I'm sorry," he pauses, mulling over his words. "I shouldn't have come. I'll go." When he realizes his own helplessness, he asks Joanne to call him a cab, but she is just staring at him, puzzled.

"Why the rush to get out of here?" she asks, her voice almost comforting. "Maybe you should go sit down, Mr. Stabler. You just said you flew all the way to the city today, right? You must be tired. I know flying takes a lot out of me."

A part of him wants to die from embarrassment, but the old man inside of him follows Joanne as she leads him to an armchair in the closest corner of the lobby. "Should have called ahead," he mutters. "I just kinda forgot. Wanted to see her." He sounds like a child, making excuses for doing something silly. He remembers the way Olivia would sit at her desk, coffee in hand, as she attempted to pawn off her paperwork on everyone else.

"_You know Liv," John would say, "Excuses are the nails that built that house of failure..."_

"_Shut up, John." His defensiveness towards his partner was always immediate. _

"You two are old friends?" Joanne asks, and he thinks that maybe his forgetfulness isn't as large of an indiscretion as he'd originally thought.

He nods. "Partners. She was my partner for 12 years." He hopes Joanne knows that he's talking about being partners in the detective sense, but if she doesn't make the connection, he figures that it doesn't matter. They were partners in everything else, too. Love included, even though they'd both been too invincible and idiotic and afraid to deal with that particular admission. He also thinks that his younger self would consider him a complete and total pansy these days. But it doesn't matter. None of it matters, really, anymore. He swallows. He doesn't want to go. He is happy that another man, at some point, has made her happy.

"You know what?" Joanne says, "I'm gonna buzz you up to Ella right now, tell her to let you in. You can take the elevator. But just this once, Mr. Stabler." She pats his shoulder, and he decides that he likes her. He likes this woman a lot. "Next time, try to remember to call, okay?"

Shit. He nods, and then forgets everything else, because this is about to happen. He is about to see her.

When the elevator passes the second floor, he decides that he is going to vomit.

Third floor, he thinks that maybe he'll kiss her right away, and save face with a bit of romance.

On the fourth floor he realizes that that is a stupid idea, because Olivia won't recognize him anyway.

The elevator stops on the fifth floor and he's sure that's he's never been this nervous in his entire life. _This is what a coronary feels like_, he thinks, _I'm going to die before I even get to see her. _He feels his entire chest constricting as the elevator doors open and he has to remind himself to breathe when he steps into the hallway.

If he'd been paying attention to the scenery, Elliot would have noticed that the Atria hallways are nice. The color on the walls is light green and pleasant and the carpeting isn't stained or disgusting. There are no flickering lamps at eye level, either. It is nothing like where Olivia used to live, he can process that much, and he momentarily grins at the thought of her tiny apartment and ratty building. The lack of a doorman or elevator had always made him uneasy, especially in the earliest years of their partnership.

"_Flicker your lights, okay?" _

"_Fuck off, Elliot. It's four flights of stairs."_

"_Just do it."_

"_And if I don't?" she raises her eyebrows, cocky as she pauses the process of unbuckling her seatbelt to meet his eyes._

_He blinks and stares back. "Then I'll sit here all night."_

_She gets out of the car and crosses the street without response, but he can tell she's laughing. And five minutes later, when the light flickers on the fourth floor, he drives away._

God, they'd been so young back then. So young. The fleeting memory, one snippet out of millions, has left him two feet from her doorway. Room 523 looms in front of him, and it's ominous and exciting and terrifying all at once because it has been decades since he's been this close to her, and he wonders if he should even bother knocking given the racket his heartbeat is making already. He doesn't think that he could move his hands if he tried now, because he is glued to the floor, and his arms have suddenly become weights. Weights. Despite his khakis and his button-down and his unzipped sweatshirt and the summertime, Elliot is freezing. He feels goosebumps dotting his skin even though he can't see them. _What if she doesn't remember? What if_, he thinks, _this door opens and Olivia has no idea who I am?_

But it could be worse.

He could knock, and she could answer, and recognize him immediately. Her face could morph into an expression of disgust and confusion and hatred, and she could kick him the hell out. He's momentarily grateful that it'll be an eighty-five-year-old woman on the other side of that door instead of the Olivia he remembers, because he doesn't think that he could take her inevitable slap across the face. He wonders if, like him, she has mellowed. Quieted. Forgiven. He wonders if she's peaceful, and he wonders if he can bear to interrupt such a thing.

In the years following his departure, or maybe in the months or weeks or days or hours or minutes that followed it, Olivia's life had extended past him. Reached past him. To people that were, to put it simply, not him. He thinks about all she has built for himself and how terrified he is to ruin that. He doesn't want to ruin that—that's the last thing he wants.

And then he hears a voice inside the apartment, speaking loudly, the actual words muffled by the wood of the door. The door is white, he notices, and he thinks the door to her old apartment might have been red. But he isn't sure. He's never sure. The doorknob twists faster than he can react, and then the door opens, and he's face to face with a blonde woman he's never seen before.

She stops, her eyes falling on him, and she cocks her head in confusion. "I, um... Hi. Can I help you?"

He doesn't answer, forgets to answer, because he can't even remember how to breathe.

"Joanne told me somebody was coming," she says, her voice soft, because she's probably reading his expression. "But I think you've got the wrong room. Are you looking for something?"

He shakes his head. "Think I've found it." Somehow, he is capable of making words. "Is, uh, is Olivia Benson here?"

The woman smiles at him almost sadly, and he thinks that this must be Ella. She's tall, like her mother, and she looks strong. She's wearing jeans and a brown sweater and her hair is down, bangs brushing her eyebrows. She's fair, pale, and swinging her car keys from one finger as if she's on her way out. He immediately likes her, but maybe that's just because she's Olivia's. "Yeah, yeah, she's here. Can I, um, can I ask who you are?"

"I'm Elliot," he answers, almost dumbly. "I'm her partner." He doesn't really know how else to introduce himself, and he sounds like a babbling fool, but at this point staying upright is a struggle. She is right here, down that hallway, in the next room. He can hear the TV on, and even though he can't see her, he can feel her. It's probably just his mind going crazy, and his hands shaking from nerves, but maybe it's her presence that's driving his body so out of whack. Maybe the return of his other half so rapidly is too overwhelming for him to take, but if that's the case, he's going to need his body to shut the fuck up and behave anyway.

The woman, Ella, smiles as if she's heard something familiar. "I'm Ella," she says, and sticks out her hand. A beat of silence passes before he realizes he's supposed to shake it, and he laughs off his embarrassment and accepts the gesture with minimal struggle.

"El," someone calls from inside, "Who's there?"

_El. _It takes a moment for him to process the fact that the voice is talking to Ella, not him.

And then he realizes. It's her. He hasn't heard that voice in thirty-seven years, but it's her. It's Olivia. And there is liquid rushing to his eyes but he can't quite remember how to blink it away, and he can't feel his knees but he thinks that they're cracking together. But it's _her_.

Ella doesn't answer her mother, she just looks him over again, as if she's unsure how to respond. They both turn at the sound of footsteps in the next room, and they're getting closer, and Elliot doesn't know what to say but he opens his mouth to speak anyway.

"—

"_Elliot._" The voice is watery and shocked and familiar and _hers_, and damn, because she's always been able to finish his sentences anyway.

_**A/N: **It's been forever since I've written anything at all, but when I found the beginning of this chapter on my computer, I couldn't really resist. There's only one more chapter after this one, so, yeah. I'm hoping that I'll get a chance to update soon but no worries. This is unbeta'd so all mistakes are purely mine. All comments, reviews, and critiques are appreciated. Thanks so much for reading!_

_Also, this was partially inspired by "Gravity" by Sarah Bareilles because it is lovely. The end. _


End file.
